"In our work at PingThings, we have seen the original, deterministic models of the electric power industry not getting replaced, but subsumed by a stochastic world filled with increasing uncertainty. Many such industries built by engineering are undergo‐ing this fundamental change—evolving from a deterministic machine to a larger, more unpredictable entity that exists in a world filled with randomness—a probabilistic system."

My interpretation of his main point is that we now have the tools to account for system variability in real-time, as opposed to previous times when some variability had to be accounted for beforehand.